Josef Albers was already 62 years old when he completed his first painting from the Homage to the Square series during Summer School at Harvard in 1950. More than 2,000 variations upon the basic compositional scheme would follow before he died. All of the paintings consist of three or four centrally arranged squares which he painted from the centre outwards. On the reverse of the panels and in his notebook, he meticulously recorded what materials and procedure he used in order to scientifically substantiate his experiments and eventually reach an explanation as to why the effect of colour depends upon its context and the other colours in the direct vicinity.
Josef Albers (1888–1976)
Study to Homage to the Square: Full Evening, 1956
Currently exhibited: Yes (Gallery: Painting as a Home)
Material: Oil on masonite
Size: 45.8 x 45.8 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_146
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Keywords:
Previous owner: Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Christie’s, London, 2010
Josef Albers was already 62 years old when he completed his first painting from the Homage to the Square series during Summer School at Harvard in 1950. More than 2,000 variations upon the basic comopositional scheme followed before his death 26 years later. In an interview in 1966, Albers explained: ‘What I do is not a “homage to the square”. That is simply the plate upon which I serve up my madness for colour.’ [1] This madness drove him to use painting to explore the relationships between colours and their effects. The roots of colour theory go back to Goethe’s treatise Zur Farbenlehre (1810) and the writings of Eugène Chevreul (1839), in which optical phenomena such as simultaneous contrast, afterimages and the optical mixing of colours in the eye were named for the first time. Albers, too, is interested in looking into the cognitive perception of painting. In 1969, he explained: ‘I did not teach art per se, but philosophy and psychology of art […]. When a student asked me what I was going to teach, I said “how to open people’s eyes”. And that has become the motto of all my teaching.’ [2]
The painting process was always the same: all of the paintings consist of three or four centrally arranged squares which he painted from the centre outwards. On the reverse of the panels and in his notebook, he meticulously recorded what materials and procedure he used in order to scientifically substantiate his experiments and eventually reach an explanation as to why the effect of colour depends upon its context and the other colours in the direct vicinity: ‘The same grey is violet here, bluish here and greenish here. Don’t you think that’s wonderful? It’s not art – no, it’s not art, it has nothing to do with art. It’s just a demonstration of how colour can trick me, deceive me, and out of that I make a new experience to tell my grandmother about: I have never seen such things before.’ [3]
With his teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, at Black Mountain College and at Harvard and Yale, Albers left his mark on generations of artists. He published his insights into the interrelationships of colour in his 1963 book Interaction of Color.
[1] Josef Albers, quoted in Neil Welliver, ‘Albers on Albers’, in: Art News, vol. 64, issue 9, January 1966, p. 69.
[2] Josef Albers, 1969, quoted in Tanja Pirsig-Marshall: ‘Das stimulierte Auge. Josef Albers and American Op Art’, in: Bauhaus and America: Experiments in Light and Movement, ed. by Hermann Arnhold, LWL Museum of Art and Culture, Bielefeld 2018, pp. 52–63, here p. 57.
[3] From an interview with Joseph Albers, conducted and recorded by Irving Finkelstein as part of his doctoral thesis ‘The life and art of J. A.’ (1965), Volume 1, Page B, Piece 1. Quoted in: Charles Darwent: Joseph Albers, Leben und Werk, German first edition, Bern [2020], p. 53.
